People have been put at risk because the NHS has stopped funding the automatic investigation of all killings by mental health patients, according to psychiatrists and victims’ families. Their findings had led to improved care of potentially dangerous mental health patients. As a result the project ceased to be called the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide in Mental Health and was renamed the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH). Prof Tim Kendall, a consultant psychiatrist and NHS England’s clinical director for mental health, declined to respond to Hendy’s claim that stopping the work could increase the risk to the public. “These individual reports are alongside the 60 to 70 independent audits of NHS services, published openly every year, which look at NHS services as a whole and give a detailed, clinically led understanding of NHS care and how it can be improved.”

Source: The Guardian July 17, 2019 13:55 UTC